September 21, 2008

A former Los Angeles Times reporter has launched what he calls "an innovative program to help secondary-school students sort fact from fiction in the digital age." Alan C. Miller plans pilot projects in 2009. The "News Literacy Project" is backed by funding from the Ford Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The idea for the project arose from Alan Miller.s experience talking about his work and why journalism matters to 175 sixth graders at his daughter's middle school in Bethesda, Md. The first pilots will be in schools in New York City and Montgomery County, Md. Additional sites will be added in the next year.

October 28, 2007

A total of 300 Concord, N.H., high-school students tracked in a 10-year study of media-literacy education effects showed quantifiable improvements in academic achievement, according to results presented by Renee Hobbs, a Temple University professor and researcher at a media-literacy conference in Cambridge, Mass, on Oct. 27, 2007.

Hobbs studied reading reading compensation and writings skills, through classroom observation, 21 hours of transcribed interviews and samples of student-made videos. Among books in the 11th-grade curriculum were: Orwell's 1984, Shelley's Frankenstein, Star's Glued to the Set, Kesey's One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest, Junger's The Perfect Storm, Anderson's Feed and Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. Films included Tough Guise, All the President's Men, High Fidelity and Bamboozled.

A key finding of Hobbs' research -- graduates of the Concord media-literacy track were much better at figuring out what was missing from news accounts -- i.e., the "frame" of the author -- then a control group of Concord teens. Hobbs also tried to measure the students' reactions to advertising, their critical viewing skills, their civic engagement and their reading comprehension and analysis.

Hobbs concludes the program was effective because it was initiated by the faculty themselves, yet supported by the superintendent, it was carefully planned, a vibrant school library and media center participated and there was involvement by reporters and editors from the family-owned daily newspaper, the Concord Monitor. Students seemed especially engaged because they perceived the curriculum to be relevant to life outside school, she added.

Hobbs has three worries, however. One is that video-production-based media literacy efforts will replace traditional print reading literacy efforts for "at risk" students who teachers think are unlikely to ever read well. A second is students will develop a general "anti-media" attitude if teachers don't emphasize critical thinking and skepticism rather than cynicism. Finally, she says educators need to avoid the temptation to silo efforts as analysis, practice or production, instead of blending all three.

AUDIO: Listen to a 58-minute streaming excerpt of Jenkins' talk by clicking on the Hipcast carat below. Or download an MP3 PODCAST:

Jenkins says there's a participation gap because only abougt 57% of youth say they have produced media while the other 43% remain passive media consumers. Education efforts need to be transaparent, he says, not pitting old literacies such as reading, against new literacies such as video production or virtual-reality gaming. And educators must figure out how to address the challenge of teaching media ethics to youth without resorting to what Jenkins terms a "surveillance culture."

About 60 people attended Saturday's event, sponsored by Home Inc., a 30-year-old non-profit which works in the Boston public schools to assist with student video production. Home Inc.'s Alan Michel awarded the group's first-annual Dola Award to Boston English High School media teacher Xavier Rozas for his work. (Photos: Rozas on left; Michel on right; click to enlarge.)

Jenkins is author of "Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide," and also heads at least two research efforts co-managed by the MIT comparative-media studies department (which Jenkins directs). He says the focus of his efforts is not to establish "media literacy" as another subject in the K-12 classroom, but rather to infuse all teaching with media-literacy principles. "It's a pradigm shift in the way we teach every subject in the classroom," he said. For example, he said, teachers might learn to ask not: "Is Wikipedia accurate?" but rather, "How is Wikipedia information assembled and when can it appropriately be used?"

Jenkins is also in charge of the four-year New Media Literacies (NML) project, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, to develop a theoretical framework and curriculum for K-12 learners that integrates new-media tools into broader educational, expressive and ethical contexts. The aim is to define new media education, how to implement it, and how to sustain it, organizers say.

During a 70-minute talk at Saturday's MIT gathering, Jenkins described how he has reached the conclusion that working with schools rather than outside them is an important part of his research.

An excerpt:

"The old disciplines that emerged around the Industrial Revolution may no longer be adequate to think about how knowledge is constructed and spread today. So in my own space, I'm an experimentalist, I'm trying to mix and match the stuff to create a different way in which knowledge emerges. But I'm also a pragmatist. And the pragmatist in me says we are going to be locked out of schools as long as we can't communicate in the language and structures that schools currently operate in. That we can't talk to these people, we can't get there unless we move somewhat in their space and pull them toward ours.

"And so as a tactical reason, I'm doing things like working in [Herman] Mellville and map reading because I think they can connect the old and revitalize and learn new things from it. It may be a fatal flaw, I don't know, but pragmatically it will get us further in the short run. And maybe we have to start challenging as we go . . . .

"So once side of me says screw the schools, let's go outside, lets do informal learning, let's do stuff after school porgrams, loets do stuff in pop culture that changes the way people think. The schools -- get rid of it. But then I meet teachers every day who are fighting the schools to try to change things on their own ground and need the moral support of academics, researchers and elsewhere to say: 'What you are doing is valuable, to fight your fight is worth fighting.' And the only way those people in the trenches are going to be able change things is they need some amunition. And so I am deeply torn on this."

AUDIO: Listen to a 58-minute streaming excerpt of Jenkins' talk by clicking on the carat below. Or download an MP3 PODCAST:

What happens when a video teacher and administrator at Boston English High School start to infuse media-literacy principles in the school day? Listen to this unedited audio of a session at today's "2007 Media Literacy Conference at MIT: Creating and Learning in a Media Saturated Culture." The panel, lead by Renee Hobbs, of Temple University, included (in first order of speaking): Rona Zickower, of Media Power Youth, Manchester, N.H.; Xavier Rozas, media teacher, Boston English High School; and Chris Toulet-Cote, assistant headmaster of English High. Click on the caret below to launch stream, or DOWNLOAD MP3 PODCAST. (Click to enlarge photo, from left, Toulet-Cote, Rozas, Zickower, Hobbs)

October 21, 2007

Don Heider, Universityof Maryland journalism school associate dean, and Kim Gregson, assistant professor in the television-radio department at the Park School at Ithaca College, offer a primer on "Second Life," in a tandem audio interview at the Online News Association annual meeting in Toronto, on Oct. 19, 2007.

A news-industry think tank and the nation's pre-eminent journalism foundation are reporting that an online training website aimed at journalists and teachers now has 51,000 registered users. News University (www.newsu.org ) claims users in more than 175 countries, according to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and its operation, the Poynter Institute of St. Petersburg, Fla. NewsU now offers more than 50 courses that cover the craft skills and professional values of journalism: from reporting, writing and editing; multimedia skills; ethics and diversity; visual journalism; broadcast and online; and leadership and management. Most courses are free, and many take just an hour or two to complete. MORE INFO AND CONTACTS.

October 11, 2007

The Ford Foundation has provided $200,000 to see the formation of the nation's first "news literacy center" -- at Stony Brook University on Long Island, and an editorial-page editor is leaving his daily-newspaper job to head it. Editor & Publisher magazine reported Sept. 26 that Newsday's Jim Klurfeld will head the center, "a resource center to develop curriculum for high-school instruction and secondary-teacher training programs, and design conferences, seminars, lectures and workshops that will bring together scholars and journalists to explore issues related to the reliability of news from print, broadcast and the web," according to a release. READ MORE:http://future-of-journalism.blogspot.com/2007/10/ford-foundation-provides-200k-to-seed.html

September 27, 2007

A first brainstorming session of the new MIT Center for Future Civic Media drew more than 25 people on Sept. 26 to share ideas for youth media and journalism projects. The session at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Mass., lasted about two hours and was introduced by Prof. Mitchel Resnick. Here Resnick's introduction followed by round-the-room descriptions by participants of their affiliations and why they attended. (Resnick at right; click on photos and whiteboard captures to enlarge for reading).CLICK ON CARAT ON BAR BELOW TO LAUNCH AUDIO STREAM:

or download mp3 podcast.The center, funded with a $5-million grant from the John S. & James L. Knight Foundation (EARLIER STORY), is taking the shorthand name: "C4FCM". Key contacts are administrator Ingebord Endter (617-253-0311) and graduate student Danielle Martin. Martin said in an email, the group is "hoping to create some support and programming around encouraging youth to become citizen journalists and learn the skills of citizen media." The goal of the introductory meeting, Martin said, was to "connect with some consistent groups of youth who are interested in working in this area and start some pilot projects (with the equipment and manpower support from MIT) in the area of citizen media with youth." Prof. Henry Jenkins, director of the MIT program in comparative media studies, and co-principal investigator on the Knight Foundation C4FCM grant, also attended Wednesday's meeting.

September 21, 2007

C-SPAN has started up a "C-SPAN Classroom" website with a mission to provide resources for teaching civics and U.S. government through its primary source programming, according to a blog report from the Internet Scout Report at the University of Wisconsin. The video-heavy site is geared for use with Real Player or Windows Media Player. It's at http://www.c-spanclassroom.org . . .. . . adds the Scout Report . . . . "over the past several decades, C-SPAN has brought many hours of fascinating programming to the generally curious. Many teachers have used their programming to edify their students about various aspects of US government . . . visitors can start their journey by viewing the "Clip of the Week", and then looking through the other thematic sections on the site, which include "Principles of Government", "Legislative Branch", and "Political Participation". Along with each clip, users can also view a short clip description, and take advantage of the discussion questions as well. Visitors will need to complete a short free registration form to access all of the clips, and this only takes a few minutes. This site is quite a delight, and for anyone who teaches civics and related fields, it will most likely become an essential online resource."

September 17, 2007

Today is Constitution Day. Three years ago a new federal law took effect requiring schools to educate all students about the Constitution and the First Amendment. But a new survey out today by Univ. of Connecticut researchers -- and funded by the Knight Foundation -- shows that a majority of America's students aren't even aware that Constitution Day exists.